I had a dream that I was a high-born patrician back in ancient Rome. I was still young - on the brink of manhood - and lived with my parents. My family, of course, kept Ostragoth slaves. This did not sit well with me. It was the Ostragoths that I spent time with. Our Ostragoth nanny raised us alongside her own Ostragoth children. My friends were Ostragoths, even though this was not supposed to be the case. But the decadence and cruelty of Roman society, I could not abide.

I started attending some of the marches of the Gothic resistance. The police would beat them and disperse them, but they always left me alone, assuming I had just gotten caught up in the fray by being on the streets. This only increased my bitterness.

One day, at one of these marches, I saw a reporter taking a photo of me (it’s okay to be anachronistic, it’s a dream). I saw that this would cause a scandal. I panicked and ran over and grabbed that reporter, grabbing his camera and beating him up.

When I came to my senses, I realized that I couldn’t live this double life any longer. I couldn’t have the privileges of patricianship that I hated so much. So I decided to join the Ostragoths wholeheartedly, singing their songs of protest and showing my face with pride. I would have to start living with them, I knew. My sponsorship would bring a lot of notoriety to their cause, I knew.

This was the start of a new life. For everybody.

With that as a catalyst, the rebellion became more than just a series of sporadic marches and riots. It became an organized, military resistance that would eventually bring the empire down.